NAICOM challenges insurers on strategies to increase contribution to GDP

THE National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) has challenged the nation’s insurance industry to draw action strategies to strengthen ongoing governmental Efforts at increasing insurance industry’s contribution to the GDP.

The Commissioner for Insurance, Fola Daniel In his key note address at the first edition of insurance industry mega confrence at Abuja said “it is to be expected that at this forum, realizable strategies and action plans would be articulated to strengthen ongoing efforts at increasing insurance industry’s contribution to the country’s GDP.

The fora organized under the auspices of Insurance Industry, Consultative Council (IICC) said ” The importance of risk management through the insurance mechanism needs to be constantly emphasized. As a matter of fact, for a country to develop its economic endowment, it must first have a supportive insurance industry. Economic managers in forward looking countries therefore keep a close eye on the insurance industry, through scrutinizing and regulating actions and inactions of insurance operators.

He recommended that this platform so created by IICC, be sustained and indeed improved upon whereby industry players and public sector managers would regularly come to share ideas and partner on improving policy formulation and execution.

Daniel explained that as part of the financial industry reform initiatives of the federal government we at the commission have conceived and executed several insurance industry specific reforms which I believe have significantly impacted and positively changed the industry leading to improvement in perception of the insuring public.

According to him, some reforms we embarked upon initially were misconstrued by operators as being punitive. Let me affirm here that all our actions have been derived from in-depth analysis of Insurance Core Principles issued from time to time by the International Association of Insuance Supervisors (IAIS), outcomes of the studies on the market jointly undertaken in collaboration with GIZ in 2012, and the findings and recommendations in the IMF/World Bank 2013 FSAP Report on the Nigerian Insurance Industry.

For the Nigerian insurance industry to be relevant in the economy, he said, the prescribed standard of practice must be our minimum. We have over the past few years pursued various initiatives that would facilitate the deepening of insurance penetration in Nigeria as well as remove the poor perception of insurance. We introduced a wide range of regulatory guideline which in addition to other market development initiatives, were targeted at strengthening insurance institution, building confidence in the insurance market and significantly improving the attractiveness of the insurance industry to both local and foreign investors.